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If she hurt a little more, maybe she’d hurt him less.
And maybe you’re a bleeding idiot,a caustic voice in him snarled.
“I keep meaning to do that,” she said softly. To the ceiling.
Dylan sighed. “You can’t hide forever, Jenny.”
“On the contrary.” And when she looked back at him, there was something wise and weary in her pretty eyes. It made the ache in him deepen. “It turns out you can hide forever. All you have to do is pretend to be blind.”
“People are blind for a whole host of reasons,” he countered. He wanted to pull her close. Or jackknife up, then storm about the room, pacing out thismessin him. But more than that, hewantedto pretend. He wanted to keep on pretending, because that was how this worked. That was how this had always worked. “And those reasons aren’t going to go away simply because a person takes a long holiday and engages in a little unexpected intimacy with an old friend.”
“It’s not unexpected to you,” she said quietly. “You told me it would happen.”
And there was a part of Dylan that wanted this so badly that he thought he might break out in blisters from the wanting.
But he wasn’t made of steel. And he knew what that look in her eyes meant. He was sure it was in his, too—the only grace in that being that it had always been in his eyes and all over his face. She wouldn’t see any shift because there hadn’t been one.
You’ll have to be fine with this as is,he told himself stoutly. Bloody martyr that he’d always been.You always thought that given the chance, she’d be head over heels in love with you. And so she is.
But he couldn’t celebrate his rightness, because it didn’t matter. It changed nothing. She was Lady Jenny Markham. And he might have put a shine on things since he’d left university, but he was still nothing more than one ofthoseKilburns. He’d made a silk purse out of the proverbial pig’s ear, but that didn’t change what he was. Who he was.
Money would never change where he’d come from.
And a few weeks in sunny Australia, taking in the Tasman Sea, didn’t change everything he knew to be true about Lady Jenny. Or, more important, Lord Fuckface himself.
Jenny might not want her arranged marriage any longer, when this was said and done. But when she got away from Dylan and flew back to England, reality would trickle in. She would remember who she was. Who she’d always been. And the complexities of the life she’d planned out long before she’d decided to come down under and see what she was missing.
Dylan knew that all he had to do was give her the faintest signal, and she would tell him every last thing he’d waited his whole life to hear. That she loved him. That finally,finally,she loved him.
And there was a part of him that wanted that almost more than he could bear.
He reached over and smoothed her hair back from her face. He saw her eyes get glassy, and he felt that same emotion land on his chest like a block of concrete.
In a way, he’d always known she loved him.
Because she hadn’t treated him like all those other boys back when. Because he was the one she called her friend.
Dylan had always held that as a sacred trust.
Because he’d never been one of the wankers. He’d truly been her friend—that part hadn’t been pretending. And that meant that now, he had to be a better friend to her than she was to herself. If he bailed on her when it mattered most, he’d be no better than every last one of those tossers who’d tried to use her for their own ends.
Dylan would bloody well love her enough to let her go.
He was sure he’d seen that shit embroidered on a tea towel somewhere.
She was still gazing at him, everything he’d ever wanted right there in her eyes—but he knew it wasn’t whatshewanted. He never had been.
“I told you what would happen,” he agreed, and made himself soundkind. “It’s a byproduct of proper fucking, remember? I did warn you.”
Her eyes were glassier, then. And he knew he’d hurt her, hehatedthat he’d hurt her, but it couldn’t be helped.
“A byproduct,” she repeated, her voice thick. She cleared her throat. “How long does it take for it to go away?”
His hand was still on her face, and he couldn’t bring himself to let go. “Not long.”
“But what if—”
“There are some people in this life who’ve always known exactly what role they had to play,” he said, gruffly. “And how to play it. You’re one of them, Jenny. You’ve never wavered from the path you’re on. As you’d normally be the first to tell me.”
